I'm generally against but I had to for the FIFA world cup as I couldn't figure out a way to legally pay for it.
What? I would just delete the cookie and refresh to restart the 1 hour timer of free viewing.
Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
271–280 of 641 posts
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a Prime account, but I'll soon be cancelling it I feel. The same products can had on eBay for less money with no shipping charges added. Prime video is quite unique, but I'm very much past them putting pre-roll ads on the content I want to watch. It's universally an advert for their own craptastic, homegrown version of an existing well-defined format. If I was interested in watching Law & Order I can start fro…
If you can wait, most Amazon products are on Aliexpress for much less, sometimes 50% less, up to 90% for electronic components.
I return a lot of products bought from Amazon. How is the return policy and cost with Aliexpress?
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#273I'm not going to speak about my personal practices, but I find the current landscape of streaming services unusable and unsustainable from a customer perspective. I share a Netflix and Prime account with my parents, and support for that is soon going to end. I don't feel like either of those services provide enough value to me to consider paying for them entirely by myself. The content is mediocre at best, finding an…
My household has one streaming service at a time. We have lists (shared reminder lists in iOS) that we make for whenever a friend mentions a good movie - it goes on the Apple TV list, or Disney plus list, etc. then once enough films build up (can take 2-6 months sometimes) we purchase a subscription and watch all those shows for one month.
This in a few sentences summarizes everything that sucks about the current streaming landscape
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#274I disagree that we're at peak monetization (see what the price of a premium cable package used to be) Since you mention Spotify I'm super happy with it. It's basically everything I ever wanted consistently. Can recommend new music better than any person I know, and I can feed it any song that I and somebody else like as a radio station and get a pretty decent list of songs we both don't mind. Granted I don't listen t…
I’ve been a Spotify premium customer for years. For music discovery, they’re incredible. But I really hate two things about Spotify: 1. Sometimes music I have in playlists disappears, for licensing reasons. I understand the reasoning but it makes me irrationally angry 2. There’s still no way to remove playlists from the home screen. No, spotify, I still don’t want to listen to your Dad Jokes podcast. I feel like some…
On 2, what really grinds my gears is that some of that content is tied to the country of your funding payment method, including podcasts in a language you don't speak about local politics on the other side of the world.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
this sounds economical but also a major chore
Auto-expiring temporary credit card numbers can help automate cancellations after N months, but figuring what shows are on what services and signing up for them as needed is still a major chore.
The problem with that is that legally, the contract to pay a provider, and the instruction to your credit-card company to pay a recurring amount, are two separate things. Some companies will send threatening letters, dept collectors etc after you if you just cancel the CC instruction.
It's different on the apple store, where Apple forced providers to agree that a subscription could be unilaterally cancelled via the store. Ideally we would pass a law so that credit cancellation also cancels a contract as long as the minimum period is over. Not holding my breath though.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#276> I just feel like if we’re at peak monetization. We're really not. If anything there's more content (for lack of a better word) available for token amounts of money than there ever has been. I don't know how old you are but back in the distant past of the 90s you had two choices if you wanted to watch a film, you could go to a shop and buy a copy, probably for more money than you'd pay for a monthly Netflix subscrip…
Owning a physical copy of a movie hasn't gotten any cheaper since the 90s. A Top Gun Maverick blu-ray is $25. Netflix streaming has gone up in price significantly from debut and has a worse content library, due to "the streaming wars." Streaming access is not fair to compare to ownership --it's closer to rental, but without any of the supply-side cost of making and distributing physical media, so value to consumers s…
>Games haven't really gone down in price either
They have though. Games used to be so much more expensive back in the day.
I actually ran across this nugget recently: https://twitter.com/Mailia/status/1608496022589952003
You had to shell out $70 for a copy of Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey '98. That's $130 when adjusted for inflation. And disc-based games weren't as cheap as you'd expect either. I think I saw an ad for Crash Bandicoot and the inflation-adjusted price of the game was like $74.
These days you might need to pay for $70 if you want a triple-A title on release date. If you don't mind waiting a bit or just go non-blockbuster titles, you can find a lot of games for quite a lot less.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#277For new music (as in recorded and released recently), no. Most of the music I buy is made by artists who probably tour in a van. So, every little sale matters to these folks. And, I'm happy to support them! In regards to some hit record from the 60's that already went 10x platinum (or whatever), I'll grab the free version in a heartbeat.
For movies / tv series, I don't want to bother. I really don't. But, the streaming landscape is just out of control (for lack of a better phrase). Even with just a few services, the signal to noise ratio is heavily noise. Who knew there were so many Christmas movies?! I just want to watch Elf. Oh, it's on the other streaming service? That's weird, it was on here last year!
I just want to buy some of this stuff digitally, so I can watch it without having to Google what service it's on. Or, after Googling it's location, come to find it's been removed recently (looking at you, Netflix). But, a lot of the newer shows are streaming only. Which, leaves one option if you want it on a hard drive.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you can wait, most Amazon products are on Aliexpress for much less, sometimes 50% less, up to 90% for electronic components.
I return a lot of products bought from Amazon. How is the return policy and cost with Aliexpress?
Never tried it; I don't think it works too well. Amazon is probably better in that case.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#279Where I am, there are frequent power cuts or Internet is down because of a storm. We do have a generator so we can keep on living. I hate the fact tho that I'm not able to pay for content I paid for : movies, fitness classes, music etc.
So looking to build a media server full of content, via legal means or piracy!
Another motivation is while I'm ok paying now, what about in 20 or 30 years time? Maybe there will be a time where I want to discard my credit card, but still want to be able to enjoy movies. I would have paid then thousands of dollars to streaming services. A media server with my favorite content sounds like a better bet.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#280I mean we live in a completely insane world:
Companies logic:
- subscribe to 10 different streaming services to watch all the tv and movies that you enjoy;
- you like music? They don’t care they will shove podcasts down your throat just because it’s cheaper for them to produce;
- ebooks? Let’s make customers pay the exact same for digital products as hard cover physical books just because it makes totally sense;
- games? Let’s put ridiculous drm that acts more like spyware, also let’s charge for 10 years old+ games the same or more than new games.
Yeah punish consumers and reward pirates, that’s their logic.
Definitely an insane world.